


A Vitality of Shadows

by Haze



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Ghost Of You Video, Attempted Séance, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27910369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haze/pseuds/Haze
Summary: The assignment was "ten minute Halloween-themed film," not "actual footage of you and your stupid friends getting totally fucking smited by a vengeful spirit in the most terrifying house you can find."In which Frank and company attempt to film a séance inside Belleville's most famously haunted house.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	A Vitality of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jennydoom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennydoom/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, here's a ghost story! I started this one-shot on Halloween and got motivated to finish it thanks to an anon on Tumblr and of course my best friends at PH. Thank you, everyone! This one-shot is dedicated to that anon, whom I am still totally down to marry, and also to Jenny, to whom this fic is gifted. I love you both. <3

_Air here is like the water_  
_Of an aquarium that’s been lived in for a while—clear and still_  
_Beyond the rigors_  
_Of glass; appearing cold (and clear) as spring streams_  
_Fed by snow and ice,_  
_But unexpectedly warm to feel, and inviting; side-lit—_  
_A vitality of shadows_  
_Once you come into it, and long bars of light_  
_Burning like spots,_  
_Remarkable for the absence of dust in their sharp crossfires;_  
_Heavy, as crystal_  
_Is heavy, as if to move here would mean pushing against a force_  
_Palpable, and strong;_  
_Yet rich with prospects of life, comfortable_  
_With the idea of life,_  
_As if, put on its slide, every drop is stocked with wonders,_  
_Swarming, about to burst—_

_Beautiful in a way,_  
_One element sustaining another, our message brought home_  
_So that the living_  
_Might come to see._

\- "What the Dead Know" by Robert Polito

* * *

This was a stupid idea. No, scratch that. This was the _stupidest_ idea, in the superlative. One of them was gonna come out of this possessed, Frank could feel it. A séance? The week of Halloween? In the creepiest, most sinister haunted fucking house in all Belleville? Jesus Christ, they were all practically begging to get their eyeballs torn out by demons. If this were a horror movie, Frank would be yelling at everyone on the screen for being jackasses. And yet, here he stood, clutching his brand new, birthday present Nikon to his chest and shivering in the bleak, blustery afternoon while Ray picked at the padlock on the front door.

“Isn’t it gonna storm later?” Frank said, glancing up at the steel gray clouds growing purple in the sky. “The roof on this sucker’s probably holier than a priest. Maybe we should wait til tomorrow, I don’t want my camera getting wet.”

“The assignment’s _due_ tomorrow, Frankie,” Ray replied, distracted by the task at hand. His poofy reddish hair frizzed out along the edges of his pulled up hoodie, and the more he worked, the most tendrils escaped. “I brought an umbrella. Just keep the camera under it. You brought a tripod, right?”

Frank huffed. “Duh. I’m not a total moron.”

“Then chill out.” Ray paused to turn his head and widen his eyes at Frank placatingly. “They weather seal the fuck out of those things now, it’ll be fine.”

He returned to the lock, and Frank sneered at him with his tongue out where Ray couldn’t see before heaving an impatient sigh, jumping off the bottom stoop and shuffling back onto the front path to get a look at the house again.

Way Manor, as the people of Belleville referred to it, was tucked into the far end of the northeast side of town on Halcott Lane, where it dead-ended to a small cul-de-sac. It had been built sometime in the late Victorian era and occupied until the early fifties, when it was suddenly abandoned by the family living there. No one heard from them again. According to Frank’s grandpa, who’d been ten at the time, there were rumors that one of their kids had killed themselves in the basement - a son who came back from World War Two “in body but not in mind,” which Frank figured was old-timer speak for “suffering from major PTSD”. People didn’t talk about suicide back then and certainly no family would have admitted to a member of theirs committing it, so they’d skipped town instead. Ownership of the place changed hands a few times: first to a local bank, who then passed it off to the historical society, who gave it to a church, and then finally around 2005 the house got condemned by the city. It was supposed to get demolished to make room for new housing, but the city never got around to it.

Now Way Manor sat forgotten, overgrown by the woods surrounding it, the last of any real woods left in Belleville. It resisted vandalism and squatters by virtue of being haunted as shit, which was also the reason why it got passed around like a hot potato for decades. Any projects attempted on the property ended in disaster. Constant accidents, people claiming to see things, plans and equipment going mysteriously missing: the standard sort of haunted-as-shit phenomena. Way Manor just...repelled people. Like it didn’t want anyone fucking with it.

There weren’t any other houses or buildings on the cul-de-sac. Just the manor. Frank gazed up at the biggest window on the front of the house. It was the only window not boarded up; the peeling deep green shutters were askew on either side of it, like they’d gotten tired over the years and sagged out of joint. The whole manor needed a new coat of paint. All the strange, scale-like shingles had faded to the color of oxidized copper. Several shingles were missing. Dead leaves and vines clung to its edges and siding like dark veins, particularly around the one turret to the left of the front door. Frank’s eye wandered back over to the big window.

The gossamer white curtains hung behind it suddenly fluttered as he watched. Frank jumped.

Ray did a quick maneuver with the hair pin he was using on the lock, dragging Frank’s attention away from the window, and cursed when the pin plinked onto the rotting porch floor. He pulled a little flashlight out of his pocket and shined it into the keyhole, peering closely. “It’s all rusted to shit inside,” he announced, sitting back on his haunches with a frustrated sigh. “Won’t budge unless we break it. Son of a bitch. Yo, Pete!” he called, and got to his feet. “You guys find anything back there?”

“Yeah, a fuckload of weeds,” Pete’s voice yelled, sounding far away. “Angry ones. With thorns on them.”

Frank and Ray exchanged an eye roll while Ray slapped the dirt off his jeans. Pete, Patrick, and Gabe had gone around the other side of the house to check for alternate ways inside in case the front door failed. Clearly that was a bust. Their séance plan was looking less and less promising, which was fine by Frank, actually. _He’d_ wanted to film something fun and cheesy for this project, maybe cover someone in corn syrup blood - the assignment was “ten minute Halloween-themed film,” not “actual footage of you and your stupid friends getting totally fucking smited by a vengeful spirit in the most terrifying house you can find.” But because his friends were, in fact, stupid, they’d turned it into the latter in about fifteen nanoseconds. First Gabe pitched filming the séance, then Ray mentioned Way Manor, and it had all spiralled down from there. Frank almost considered jumping ship for another group, but they’d all been a group in this film class since the beginning of the semester, and also, Ray was his best friend. He didn’t deserve to be subjected to the other three without a buffer. 

Well. Gabe and Patrick were pretty cool, but Pete Wentz was a douche canoe. Frank longed for duct tape every time Pete opened his stupid mouth. He and Patrick were a packaged deal, though, so they were stuck with him till the end of fall semester. At least Pete had agreed to do all the audio synch for post-production. And he did have, like, a _ton_ of money to throw at all their projects (and beer runs), so, whatever. Frank could tolerate the fucker if he kept Frank in craft brews and non-pirated Final Cut Pro.

“Oh, wait, we might have something,” Pete continued, and then there was the sound of splintering wood and Patrick’s surprised yelp just before a long silence, broken by all three of them cheering in victory. “We’re in! Back door was boarded up, but Gabe broke it down!”

Frank got an uneasy feeling at that, but Ray didn’t seem deterred in the slightest. He grabbed his backpack from where he’d left it on the porch and swung it over his shoulder. “Guess it beats trying to hack off the padlock. Come on, Frankie.” Ray took off into the overgrown thicket along the side of the house. Hesitant, Frank lingered at the front stoop, and peered up at the big window. The curtain didn’t move again, but Frank couldn’t shake the creeping feeling he was being watched.

“Frank? Hurry up, dude, we’re wasting daylight!” Ray called, and Frank finally dropped his head with a shake.

“Like that’ll make a fuckin’ difference in the Addams Family Dream House,” he muttered. A crack of thunder sounded no sooner had the words left his mouth, and in its wake, Frank could have sworn he heard a voice giggling nearby. He hugged his Nikon close, and followed Ray’s path through the bushes. Broken branches snagged at his sweater and jacket. One extra long one slapped him across the face when he tried to edge past it, and left a stinging welt in its wake. Frank flipped it off, rubbing his cheek with his other hand, and arrived at the back porch sullen.

“Jeez, it’s like Jumanji back here,” he remarked, glancing around the yard. The grass reached almost to Frank’s waist and like Pete had said, thorny weeds teemed among the huge plots of bull thistle and pigweed. Dead leaves from the birch trees ringing the edge of the property blanketed the top layer of plants. Just looking at it made Frank want to sneeze, although it was too cold for anything to be pollinating.

“Oh thanks, Frank. I super wanted to be thinking about jungle animals attacking me right now,” said Patrick, dryly, tugging the brim of his hat down. He and Ray stood together outside the broken-down back door. Frank could make out the edge of a checkered linoleum floor two feet or so into the house, but beyond that, it was too dark to make out anything clearly. Splintered wood pieces and plywood littered the ground both in and outside of the doorway. Pete and Gabe were nowhere to be seen.

“They’re scoping out the inside for a good filming spot,” Ray said, to Frank’s questioning look. “Have you taken footage of the yard or anything?”

Oops. No, he had not. While they waited for Pete and Gabe to emerge, Frank had Ray help him white balance, and then he took a couple panning shots of the backyard, along with a static close-up of a reed blowing in the wind. Pete came charging out of the house just as Frank stopped shooting on the latter.

“Gabe’s getting unpacked in the living room. Wait till you guys get a load of this place, it’s a trip,” he said, pulling his purple and gray-striped beanie further down over his hair. “Anyone scared of spiders?”

Frank blanched, and grabbed Ray’s arm. “Spiders?” he repeated, three octaves above his normal speaking voice. “Are there hella spiders in there? Fuck that, I am _not_ walking into fucking Shelob’s lair!” He could already picture it; gobs of web stretching wall to wall, caked in dust, crawling with fucking black widows and tarantulas and shit - 

Pete wheezed with laughter, pointing at Frank and leaning hard into Patrick’s shoulder, who to his credit looked unimpressed and a little embarrassed. “Oh my God, your _face_ ,” Pete gasped. “You look like you pissed yourself. Oh man, I wish we’d been filming.”

“Hilarious, Pete,” Ray snapped, as Frank let go of him and stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest with a scowl. Jesus, Pete was such a dickhead. Frank could not wait for this project to be over. “Just show us where to set up the fucking camera, alright?”

Still grinning, Pete wiped under his eyes and made a beckoning motion with one arm. “It’s back this way, follow me. Be careful, Frankie!” he added, high-pitched and mocking. “The Spider-man is having you for dinner tonight!”

Frank gave the finger to the back of Pete’s head. He exchanged a look with Ray, who gave an almighty eye roll and squeezed Frank’s shoulder once before moving to follow Pete and Patrick inside. Frank took one last look at the backyard and at the rapidly darkening sky, and the crawling, foreboding sensation worsened. He swallowed it down as best he could, and then reached into his backpack for his flashlight, turning its beam on the linoleum floor as he took a deep breath. With a silent prayer to whichever god might be listening, he stepped over the threshold into the house.

Which was...well. Much as Frank hated to admit it, Pete was right: it was a _trip._

It didn’t look anything like a haunted house. This whole time, Frank had been picturing some kind of _Resident Evil_ nightmare shack; foot-thick dust, spiderwebs hanging like bedsheets from ceiling corners, ramshackle decaying furniture mummified in yellowing dropcloths, peeling wallpaper and paint. Dead rats. Like, real-life Halloween shit. But the inside of the manor looked totally, bizarrely _normal._ It reminded Frank of a museum, one of the boring ones you had to attend on history class field trips where it was really just some two hundred year old house restored to how it would have looked in 1857. Only instead of 18-whenever, it was mid-twentieth century. Still creepy in its own way - frozen in time, like someone had taken a chunk of 1940s era Americana and encased it in resin - but not a goth horror show. Nothing was even dusty. Frank felt like he’d stumbled onto a TV set. He found himself turning in circles, gaping around what had to be the kitchen as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

There was a vintage refrigerator with a single door; no freezers yet. The cabinets were a clean, shiny white. Canned goods and boxes lined the open shelves. A two-burner stovetop with four pull doors on its front, two of which Frank guessed were ovens by their black glass fronts was positioned beneath the biggest window overlooking the backyard. The wallpaper was all firmly adhered to the walls, and had a pastel blue floral pattern on it. A small toaster was tucked onto a countertop beside the fridge. Against one wall, a five piece dining set made of some sort of honey-colored wood was neatly assembled, all the chairs tucked in with the table covered by a cheerful yellow cloth. A wood-trimmed clock on the wall, broken now, displayed the time as 5:14. There was a paper calendar pinned up beneath it flipped to April 1945. The picture for the month was a World War II propaganda piece of a victory garden declaring “UNCLE SAM SAYS - GARDEN TO CUT FOOD COSTS: Ask the US Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. for a Free Bulletin on Gardening - It’s Food for Thought.” The first eight days of the month were crossed off. On April 9th, someone had written in neat cursive, _Gerard’s 24th Birthday._ A strange sense of melancholy pinged through Frank at that. 

“Frank? You okay?” Ray’s voice called. Frank shook himself, glancing around the kitchen one more time.

“Yeah. This is - this is fuckin’ weird, man,” he replied, and turned just as Ray appeared in the doorway leading to what was probably the dining room.

“Right? It’s like visiting your grandma on steroids.” He shrugged off his backpack and unzipped the main pocket. “I brought my new LED light panels, we should record some stuff walking through here. It’s the same for the rest of the first floor.” Frank turned his camera back on, and after adjusting for Ray’s lights, he shot some footage moving slowly from the back door through the kitchen, and into the dining room. In here was a china cabinet displaying rows of plates and cutlery, a long mahogany dining table with six chairs atop one of those ornamental rugs Frank’s grandma had a billion of in her house, and a sideboard. The table had a white lace cloth and two silver candlesticks holding white tapered candles, partly burned. Each place was set, as though expecting company. Frank lingered on these with the camera.

“I feel like a creepy butler’s gonna come out of nowhere and call me ‘young master Iero’ or something,” Frank commented to Ray after he’d stopped recording. Ray shook his head.

“Nah. Too middle-class for a butler. I was picturing June Cleaver.” Frank snorted, and Ray waved him on. “Everyone’s in the living room, c’mon.”

Frank followed him through another open doorway. The living room instantly became Frank’s favorite, due in large part to the baby grand piano and the big Victrola tucked into the corner beside it. On the other side of the piano was a big wooden box that Frank didn’t recognize until he got close enough to inspect it and saw the radio dial on its front - right, radios used to be huge back in the day. There was a Duke Ellington record sitting on the Victrola, and Frank smiled at it. Even more interesting than the musical equipment, though, was the fireplace mantle - it had framed pictures sitting on it, and Frank beelined for them as soon as he spotted them. The photographs were surprisingly clear and didn’t seem like they’d aged at all. A couple sat posed in front of a backdrop in what looked like wedding day garb, the groom seated and looking puffed-up but straight-faced while his bride stood at his shoulder and beamed at the camera, holding her bouquet. Then beside it, two little boys in matching outfits with their arms around each other in front of a tree. A series of what seemed like school pictures of each of the two boys throughout the years. One small photo of the same woman from the wedding photo with her arms around both boys, all three of them smiling with Rockefeller Center ice rink gussied up for Christmas in the background. A couple larger family portraits. And the last one, of the two boys all grown up and wearing military uniforms, standing together on the front porch of Way Manor back before it started falling apart. One of them, the taller of the two, had on glasses and was standing at attention, while the other stood relaxed with his arms crossed over his chest and an easy, charming smile on his face. Frank found himself drawn to the last picture in particular. The film quality and uniforms suggested World War II; was one of these the son his grandpa told him about, the one who killed himself? What happened to the other one?

“God, those pictures creep me out,” Patrick commented, and Frank turned around from the mantle. Patrick and Pete were helping Gabe set up in the middle of the living room floor, Patrick arranging candles on top of the picnic blanket Gabe brought while Pete followed with a lighter. Gabe was already wandering around the room with a lit bundle of palo santo and cedar, eyes closed, murmuring to himself; Frank caught “ _...goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,”_ as Gabe walked past him. He raised his eyebrows at him, although Gabe obviously didn’t see it, and then he looked at Patrick.

“I think they’re cool,” Frank said. He shrugged, and hugged his camera. Ray was setting lighting panels in different spots around the room, and waved Frank over behind the sofa.

“We should mount the tripod on top of the couch, if it’ll balance,” Ray told him. “Is it the telescoping one?” Frank nodded, and knelt to set his backpack on the carpet and pull the tripod out. He and Ray spent a couple minutes figuring out how best to angle it, and then a few more minutes setting up the camera, and by the time they were finished, Gabe had wrapped up whatever prep work he’d been doing and settled cross-legged on the picnic blanket. The still-smoking bundle lay in a glass bowl in the middle. 

“Alright, _descreídos_ , you ready for this shit?” Gabe said, and rubbed his hands together with a massive grin. “I’m so stoked, I haven’t done one of these since, like, eighth grade.”

“Oh, awesome,” Ray groaned, rounding the sofa to sit on one of the blanket corners. “That instills a lot of confidence.”

Gabe shot Ray a miffed look. “Hey, I’ve done a lot of research, okay? And like, I admit, there’s supposed to be a bigger ritual involved, but I don’t know if this place is structurally sound enough for me to anoint all the windows and mirrors and I’m definitely not about to go throwing infusions all over the carpet. We’re trying to make contact with the dead here, not piss them off.” Gabe pulled his Mets cap down firmly over his forehead. “You guys bring hats like I told you to?”

Ray rummaged through his backpack and grabbed out a pin-striped fedora that he more or less managed to squash over his hair, while Frank pulled on his Liverpool hat. Gabe nodded at them both in approval, and gave Frank a thumbs-up to start recording. Frank pushed the button, and quietly took his place beside Ray on the blanket. Clockwise from Gabe at the helm was Pete, Ray, Frank, and Patrick, and they each had a tea candle burning in front of them. Gabe pulled out a fat white candle with three wicks, lit each of them, and set the candle in front of the glass bowl, and then picked up a container of kosher salt and made a circle around the bowl and candle. They’d talked at the school library a week before about what the ritual itself would involve; Gabe would light the big candle and make a salt circle, and then they’d all hold hands and try to make themselves “prime vessels” for whatever it was haunting the house, using the candle to pull it in like a moth. This was the part Frank was most afraid of, because what if the spirit was evil? What if it possessed one of them and started murdering everyone?

“It won’t,” Ray had said. He waved apologetically to a nearby study group giving them dirty looks, because Frank had kind of maybe gotten a little hysterical and shouty. “Because séances are bullshit.”

“That’s what the hats and salt are for, actually,” Gabe had replied, glaring at Ray. “The hats protect from individual possession, cause you’re supposed to keep your head covered, and the salt should keep the spirit contained to the candle. When we blow the candle out, we’ll sever the spirit’s connection to the living realm. So if it turns out it’s an evil ghost, it’ll only be a problem for as long as it takes to put out the candle.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Frank had asked Gabe, who smirked.

“Then I douse whoever’s been possessed with holy water, _querido_. No worries.”

Frank kept his gaze fixed on the big candle, while the other four closed their eyes and everyone reached out to join hands. Ray’s hand was cold; Patrick’s was sweaty. Frank tried to let his mind go blank and let his thoughts slip away “like dead leaves down river” or whatever dumb thing Gabe had said in the library about it.

After several minutes of silence, Gabe murmured, so soft Frank could barely make out the words, “We wish to speak freely with the spirit who inhabits this house.”

Frank held his breath.

At first, nothing. That nothing stretched on for a long, long time, long enough that Frank started to suspect that Ray had been right the whole time, and he’d been an idiot to be scared.

And then, suddenly: all nine tiny candle flames went out in unison.

Frank’s heart leapt into his mouth, and he squeezed Ray’s hand, hard. Ray didn’t open his eyes; he seemed like he was concentrating. The other three didn’t move or speak. In fact, none of them looked like they were even breathing. Frank, alarmed, dropped Ray and Patrick’s hands, but neither reacted. They kept their hands raised like nothing had happened. Frank shook his head and rubbed his eyes. The scene was exactly the same when he opened them again, like the other four had become a part of the frozen-in-time-ness of the rest of the house. Frank shoved at Ray in sheer panic just to interact with him, see if Frank could get him to move at all, but although his hands made contact with Ray’s arm, Ray didn’t budge. Frank could have screamed.

And then a voice said, “Don’t worry, they’re fine.”

Frank did scream then. Loudly. He shot to his feet, heart in his mouth, ready to snatch up the camera and bolt, and then he spotted the figure leaning in the doorway between the dining room and the living room. He stopped, and stared, his mouth hanging open. It was the young man from the picture on the mantle, the one with the charming smile, looking like he’d just walked back into the house from taking it. He was even posed the same way. Frank froze. The man looked back at him, casual as anything, and said, “Hi.”

Frank said nothing. Could say nothing. His entire body had become a live wire of pure terror, and all of his muscles were seized up, including his tongue.

“...So, uh. I’m a little rusty on the niceties, but I think this is where you say hi back,” said the man, raising his eyebrows, and the smile widened into a grin. “Christ almighty, you’re a cold fish. What’s wrong? Never seen a dead guy before?"

A frisson flashed through Frank at that word: dead. The man was dead. Frank was looking at a fucking _ghost_ , who was _talking to him_ , and grinning like something about that was _funny._ He was gonna hyperventilate. Frank clutched at the front of his t-shirt - more importantly, at his grandfather’s rosary beneath it - and gulped, his mouth dry.

“Seen? Yes,” he finally managed. “First time talking to one, though.”

The ghost threw back his head and laughed. Frank took a startled step back in response and felt the fireplace mantle bump his shoulder blades. “You know? Fair enough. Sorry I scared ya, kid, it’s uh, been awhile since anyone was last here and even longer since they wanted to chat.” He uncrossed his arms and reached a hand out to push a button on the wall; all the lights in the living room switched on at once. Frank squinted in the sudden glare. How the fuck did the electricity still work in here? The wiring had to be at least seventy years old, and Frank doubted anyone was paying a utility bill on the place. Maybe he was dreaming. Or hallucinating. The ghost stepped fully into the living room, digging in his front breast pocket as he did.

“Jeez, my old lady’d kill me if she saw the place now. I don’t even have coffee on,” he was muttering, and he pulled out a slim yellowish packet of something Frank didn’t recognize until the ghost drew a cigarette out of it. “You mind if I smoke?” he asked Frank, a match appearing in his hand even as he said it, and Frank just sort of shrugged, so the ghost struck the match against one knee and lit up. “You guys didn’t have to break the door down, you know,” the ghost continued, walking through the room to the piano, where he picked up a heavy-looking crystal ashtray off the closed key cover and then sat on the bench, placing the ashtray beside him. “There’s this newfangled thing called ‘knocking’ that I hear is all the rage.”

“Oh, uh. S-sorry. We didn’t know someone would...answer it,” said Frank, lamely, watching the ghost settle back against the piano and cross his legs, cigarette dangling from the hand resting on one knee. He looked strange. Real enough, but slightly wrong, like he’d been built from a negative image. Composed from shadow rather than light. Frank realized that he couldn’t smell any smoke. He could see it curling from the end of the cigarette and up around the ghost’s face when he exhaled, but that was all. “So is this, uh. Do you - “ Frank caught himself just before he said the words _live here_.

The ghost quirked his mouth at that. “Once upon a time I did. Now I’m just kind of...here.” He jerked his chin toward frozen Gabe. “‘Inhabiting.’ Like your friend said.”

Frank looked at the other four with wide eyes. No one had moved. His heart was still beating fast and loud. “Right.” He dragged his sweaty palms down either side of his jeans, and then something occurred to him that made him gasp. “Holy shit, am I dead too?”

“Language,” said the ghost, sharply, and wagged a finger at Frank. “This is still my mother’s house, God rest her soul, and I won’t hear it. No, you’re not dead.” He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray. “Communing with the living is tricky business. I can only talk to one of you.”

Oh. Huh. He bet Gabe would be pissed about that later, that Frank was the one who got to talk to the ghost and not him. He swallowed, and curled his hands into fists to feel his fingernails bite into his palms.

“Don’t think I’ve got long to chat, either,” the ghost went on, and his thick eyebrows furrowed. “Something feels…peculiar. Not sure I can describe it to somebody who hasn’t yet shuffled off the mortal coil, but I can almost…” He grasped his chin for a moment in thought, and then shrugged. “Anyway. Where are my manners? I haven’t introduced myself, and here I am, jabbering away like a mook.” He propped up his cigarette in the ashtray and got back to his feet to approach Frank with his hand out. “Gerard Way. Former 1st Infantry Division, current dead guy.”

Frank stared down at Gerard’s hand for a long second in dread. Shaking hands with a ghost. Jesus. He steeled himself, and then took it - to his relief, it wasn’t cold and didn’t turn to dust as soon as he touched it. “F-Frank Iero. Uh. I’m a...film student?”

His voice went up in pitch at the end when Gerard suddenly seized Frank’s hand with both of his and beamed at him. “I thought I recognized that face. Little Frankie down the block! Last time I saw you, you were, what, ten? How old are you now? Criminy, it’s good to see you, kid.”

“Uhhh.” It took him a second to catch on; once he did, Frank quickly shook his head. “Oh, you mean - I’m not - I’m the, uh, third. Frank Anthony Iero the Third. You must be thinking of my grandpa.”

Gerard gaped at him. He dropped Frank’s hand, and took a few steps back, looking him up and down in disbelief. “The - third?” he said at last, sounding strangled. Frank nodded. Gerard, wide-eyed, ran a hand over his slicked-up pompadour (which didn’t budge), and sank back down onto the piano bench with a faraway look on his face. “Fuck me,” he said faintly, and then looked chagrined. “Sorry, Ma."

Despite himself, Frank giggled, a high-pitched sound that was more a release of tension than anything else. Gerard glanced up at him, cracked a brief smile, and then slowly shook his head.

“Do I wanna know what year it is?” he said, leaning his elbows over his knees. “Jesus, I figured it’d been awhile, but...third. God. How old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty-one on Halloween,” said Frank, and then added, “Uh, that’s in two days.”

Gerard put his head in his hands with a small groan. Frank felt sort of bad for him. Apparently being dead meant also being unaware of time passing, which made sense. Christ, he was _talking to a dead person._ Frank shuddered, and sat heavily back down on the floor. Gerard peeked at him through his fingers.

“You alright?” he asked him. Frank shrugged. Gerard blew out a breath, and reached for his cigarette. “Well. Hell of an introduction on both sides, I guess. How’s your grandpa doing?”

Frank grimaced. “Same as you.”

“Same as - oh.” Gerard sagged, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead with his brows drawn together. “That’s a shame. Really, I’m damn sorry to hear that, Frank. I always liked that kid.”

A loud crack of thunder sounded right after Gerard finished speaking, followed by the staticky sound of a sudden downpour. Frank started; first he looked up at the ceiling, and then at his camera, its red light still blinking steadily to let him know it was recording. Shit, he hoped the roof was in as good shape as the stuff in here. Gerard took a long drag off his cigarette before stubbing it out, and gave Frank a knowing look. 

“It’s alright. You’re safe in here.”

Frank watched him get up from the bench and walk over to one of the windows, staring out of it pensively with his arms folded, although Frank wasn’t sure what he could actually _see_ given that it was boarded over on the outside. From this angle, Gerard looked more tangible, somehow. Frank surveyed the living room, lingering on the other guys still frozen where they sat. “Um. Can I ask you something?”

Gerard glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t turn his head. “You did say ‘speak freely,’ so. Shoot.”

“How is this place so…” He made a vague, sweeping gesture with his hands, unsure how to finish the thought. Well-maintained? Pristine? Not covered in spiders? Frank hadn’t sneezed once since he’d been in here, and usually he just had to think the word _dust_ before his nose became a snot factory. He flopped his hands back into his lap. “I mean, no one’s been looking after the house. It got condemned, like, fifteen years ago. The lightbulbs in here are older than color TV, how the fu - how in the world do they still work?”

Gerard’s mouth curved up at the aborted curse word. He pursed his lips, still staring out at nothing; Frank was starting to think Gerard wasn’t going to answer him when at last Gerard said, softly, “I’m not sure.” He turned away from the window then to face Frank again. His expression mirrored the weather outside. “There’s no manual for dying. No one explains anything to you - well, at least, no one explained anything to _me._ I’ve got theories, but that’s all.” He reached over Frank’s head for something on the mantle; one of the photos, which he handed to Frank before settling down cross-legged on the carpet across from him. It was the picture of Gerard and the other boy in uniform. Gerard nodded to it. “That’s my brother. His name was Mikey.”

Frank stared down at the picture, at the unsmiling young man with his thick glasses and proud, rigid posture. He looked too serious to be a Mikey. 

“He got drafted a couple days after his eighteenth birthday,” Gerard continued. His voice was only just louder than the rain. “We took that picture while I was on leave, I’d been in Sicily already. Mikey ended up with the First when we shipped back to England to prep for Neptune.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “The night before launch day, there was this stupid dance we all went to and Mikey got blind drunk. He was terrified, you know, ‘cause he’d never seen real action before. We had to carry him back to the barracks, me and Schechter, and right after we poured him into his bunk, he grabbed me, and he looked at me, and he said, ‘Gee, I think I’m gonna die tomorrow.’ And he said it with this...bone-chilling clarity. Like he’d instantly sobered up to tell me this one thing. And then he passed out two seconds after that.”

Gerard folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. “We were on the same lander the next morning. As soon as we got eyes on the beach, I told Mikey that if we got separated I’d wait up for him. And he was so scared, he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.” Gerard swallowed, hard, and it took him a second before he went on, “I don’t think he made it five minutes.”

Frank sucked in a breath. He’d known it was coming, but hearing it - fuck.

“From the word go, the whole thing was FUBAR. I lost track of him within a minute or so. We had to swim to shore and we were under fire the whole time. I think I got maybe fifteen feet up the beach before I heard the screaming.” Gerard’s eyes had glazed over, and now they sparkled at the rims. “Schechter did his best, but German artillery are mean sons-of-bitches and Mikey was a skinny kid. He was just nineteen.” Gerard’s voice broke on the last word. He pressed both hands over his face, briefly, and blew out a long breath.

“I’m...I’m so sorry,” Frank offered. He didn’t even really _know_ Gerard, and he knew Mikey even less, but his throat felt tight. Nineteen. Jesus. At nineteen all Frank did was get stoned at the mall, fuck around with his crappy secondhand Canon, and fail to learn how to longboard. He couldn’t begin to imagine dying in a war at that age.

Gerard jerked his head at Frank in response. He laced his hands together and leaned his chin on top of his knuckles. “I didn’t even get to see his body. I took a bullet to the thigh maybe twenty minutes later, and after they hauled my ass off to the Red Cross tent I never saw him again. Schechter got his tags to me, though. When they shipped me back home I buried ‘em in a coffee can at the plot my folks got him at Our Lady.” Gerard had fixed his gaze someplace over Frank’s shoulder, but something seemed to suddenly occur to him, and he looked back at Frank with urgency. “Is Our Lady still there? Our Lady of Sorrows on Ridge Road?”

“Yes,” Frank said instantly, because he lived practically on top of it. A relieved Gerard nodded, and dragged a hand up over his hair again. 

“Good. Good, I was hoping that was the case.” He offered Frank a small smile. “I went to your grandpa’s baptism there. Back in ‘35. Screamed his little head off the whole time.”

Frank snorted, despite himself, and grinned back. “Sounds about right.” Another peal of thunder roared outside; Frank looked down at the picture again. He hadn’t even realized he’d been gripping the frame so hard it was digging into his fingers. Mikey did look really young, he noticed. Too young for what happened to him. 

“Anyway,” said Gerard, his voice softer, “The last thing I told Mikey was that I’d wait for him. If we got separated.”

Frank glanced up. Gerard was looking down at the picture frame in Frank’s hands, his expression wistful. When Frank realized what Gerard meant, he had to fight an urge to gasp out loud. “You think you’re here because you promised him you’d wait.”

Gerard just stared at him. He looked exhausted, suddenly. And - actually, if Frank squinted, he thought he could see the outlines of the furniture behind Gerard through him. Just a little. “I can still feel him,” he said, hushed. His eyes had tears in them again. “When our folks passed, I - I felt them go. Whatever the other side may be, that’s where they are. I know it. But Mikey’s still on this...I dunno, plane? Realm? And I don’t know where. I’ve tried calling to him, but I don’t know if he can hear me. So all I can do is wait.” Gerard gestured around at the living room. “I think this is all because of me. Keeping everything the way it was, to make it easier for him to find his way back. That’s just my theory, though.”

Frank wanted to cry. The lump in his throat returned with a vengeance, and didn’t go away no matter how much he swallowed against it. He didn’t want to ask the follow-up question that came to mind, but curiosity got the better of him. “My grandpa said - there were rumors. That you came back from the war, and…”

Gerard’s expression darkened. Without a word, he loosened the knot in his uniform tie, unbuttoned his collar, and pulled it down just enough to expose a livid rope burn looped around the base of his neck. Frank clamped a hand over his mouth to contain the noise of dismay that bubbled out of him. “In the basement,” said Gerard. A deafening thunderclap rang out, and once it died away he added, “My body’s still down there.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Frank blurted out before he could stop himself. He gaped at Gerard in shock, and as he did, he noticed that Gerard was starting to look downright transparent. The shadows of him seemed deeper, the hollows of his cheeks and eyes more pronounced. “Do you - are you - fuck, no, I don’t wanna know, God. _God._ ” He buried his face in his hands before he screamed out loud, forced himself to take three deep breaths through his nose, and when he felt like he was in less imminent danger of throwing up dropped his hands back into his lap and looked up. Gerard had buttoned his collar again and was straightening his tie. He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Frank.

“It’s just bones now, kid, they can’t hurt ya.” He finished fixing his tie, and then stood, offering his hand to Frank to help him up. He took the picture frame from him once Frank was on his feet again, and set it back in its place on the mantle, giving it a last, lingering look before heaving a sigh. “I just...didn’t want to be in a world without Mikey in it. Everything else I saw in that damn war was a picture show compared to watching my baby brother die.” He barked out a dry, humorless laugh that made Frank break out in goosebumps. “I wrote our old lady a letter while I was in the Red Cross tent on that same day. I was delirious on blood loss and morphine and according to Schechter, I thought if I wrote it fast enough, it’d get there before the official Army telegraph. I never actually sent it to her, ‘cause I passed out before the mail guy came around, and when I woke up I was lucid enough to see how nuts I sounded. You wanna see it?”

He produced a piece of folded-up paper from inside his uniform jacket before Frank could answer, and offered it to him. Frank, sort of dreading what it might say, took it anyway. The handwriting was nearly illegible - like if a kid still learning their penmanship had written it in the dark and in a hurry. The ink was smeared, too, which didn’t help. Frank had to peer at it for awhile before he deciphered the first line. “ _Mama, we all go to hell,_ ” he read aloud. “Damn.”

Gerard nodded. “The whole thing’s like that. Schechter read it and told me it sounded like a poem out of the devil’s nightmare.”

Frank spent a little while figuring out some of the other lines: _We’re all full of lies, we’re meant for the flies, right now they’re building a coffin your size. Mother what the war did to my legs and to my tongue, you should have raised a baby girl, I should have been a better son. We’re damned after all through fortune and flame we fall so raise your glass high for tomorrow we die and return from the ashes you call - the shit that I’ve done with this fuck of a gun, you would cry out your eyes all night long._

“This is, uh. Kind of inspired,” said Frank, who could almost hear a tune for it in his head. It read a lot like an Iron Maiden song. If Ray weren’t frozen, he’d be showing it to him. “Definitely dark, but cool as fuck. Uh. Fudge.”

Gerard smiled at him, small and gone in a blink. “My folks would’ve had me sent to the nuthouse if they ever caught wind of it. Well,” he added, cocking his head to one side, “I guess I belonged there, in the end.”

Frank folded the letter up and handed it back to Gerard, who tucked it into his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Gerard gave a slow nod. “I just hope I can see him again one day.” He slid his hands into his pants pockets and glanced around the room. He looked like he was taking in every detail of it - he stopped and lingered on Frank’s friends on the floor. The big white candle in the middle, Frank realized after tracking Gerard’s gaze, was burning again. “Think that means it’s about time for me to go,” said Gerard. His voice was as gossamer-thin as his appearance now. A well of anxiety sprang up in Frank’s chest.

“Go where?” he asked. “Are you gonna - ?” He stopped when he realized he didn’t know how to finish the question. Move on? Walk into the light?

“Sorry, poor choice of words. As in, I can’t keep this up for much longer.” Gerard stared at the white candle, frowning, his brow furrowed like he was puzzling something out. “I dunno if it’s because I knew your grandpa or what, but it was easier to forge a connection to you than your friends. Don’t think I could’ve maintained it this long if it had been one of them. I’ll stick around as long as I can.” He tore his gaze away from the candle like it was a real struggle, and looked at Frank again. “You got anything you’re dying to ask? No pun intended.”

Frank could think of approximately ten _billion_ things he was dying to ask Gerard. Like, several days’ worth of questions. But he did have a forerunner, and he’d been fighting asking it the whole time. Now, though, he finally, hesitantly said, “Uh. Sorry if this is, you know, rude. But when you - um. Died. What...happened?”

Gerard let out a laugh. “Christ, I was wondering when you were gonna ask. Honestly, I think it’s different for everyone, so I’m afraid my experience may not shed a whole lot of light on what’s waiting for you. For me, it was a ticker tape parade.” He grinned, and Frank could see the baby grand piano through it. “A, uh, somewhat macabre one. Everyone was in black. I walked from Manhattan all the way back to the front door, and when I turned around to say goodbye, all I saw was this big, yawning void behind me. So I hightailed it inside. Been a little nervous about opening the door ever since.”

He got a peculiar look on his face, then, and his eyes went wide for a split second before he dug into his shirt collar beneath his tie. “Frank, could you do me a favor? I just got an idea.”

“Sure, yeah, anything,” said Frank, and watched as Gerard drew a chain out of his shirt. He yanked it, and it broke; he proffered it to Frank, who saw the two dog tags dangling off the part of the loop that was still intact.

“Mikey’s plot at Our Lady’s to the left of the chapel, if you’re facing it, and about ten feet from a northern red oak. His full name’s Michael James Way. If you can find it, could you leave these with him?”

Gerard’s fist was almost vapor around the chain, but it and the tags still looked fairly corporeal. Frank held his hand underneath, and Gerard dropped them into his open palm. They felt solid against his skin, and clinked together when he closed his fingers around them. He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. Gerard met Frank’s eye, and he gave him the same charming smile from his pictures. “I’m glad I got to meet you, Frank,” he said, and he sounded like a radio on the other side of a football field. “I think we could have been friends, under better circumstances.”

Frank laughed, but it came out clogged. “You don’t consider us friends?”

“Well, I do now.” Only the barest trace remained of Gerard now, a negative imprint on the background of the living room like cigarette smoke. “I’ll say hi to your grandpa, okay?”

And then he was gone. Frank clutched his fist around Gerard’s dog tags in his pocket, the thin metal edge biting into his skin - 

Frank came to with a gasp like he was drowning, and went into a violent coughing fit almost immediately. His camera strap was twisted around his neck; a pair of hands helped him get it untangled and hauled him to sit upright, thumping him between the shoulder blades until he could breathe again. Where was he? Were they still in the living room? When did he pass out?

“Frank, Frankie, it’s okay. Look at me. Can you hear me?” said Ray’s voice, sounding distressed. Frank opened his eyes, but everything was blurry and he couldn’t make his eyes focus.

“Is he okay? Should we call 911? We’re in big fucking trouble if we have to call an ambulance - ”

“Will you shut the fuck up already, Pete?” Gabe snapped. He also sounded worried, which wasn’t good. “Frank just had a full on fit, you could at least _pretend_ to be concerned!”

A what? Frank squeezed his eyes shut, hard, and opened them again, and found Ray holding his face between both hands and watching at him through tears. Which totally freaked Frank out, because Ray Toro did not cry, like, _ever_. He blinked back at him in bewilderment. “Ray? What happened?” He glanced around, and was even more confused when he discovered they were on the back porch, surrounded by splintered wood from the busted door. His backpack had fallen off and was upside down atop a large hunk of debris. Gabe, Pete, and Patrick were all crowded together behind Ray, peering at Frank with fear writ large on their faces. Frank looked back at Ray. “Did you guys pack everything up already?”

Over Ray’s shoulder, the other three exchanged mystified looks while Ray swallowed hard and said, “We haven’t started setting anything up yet. You were following behind me through the door, and then you collapsed on the ground.”

Frank stared. “What? No, I - I came in, and everything was weird and time capsule-y, and we took walk-through footage through the kitchen. And Pete and Patrick lit candles, Patrick said that the pictures on the mantle freaked him out, and Gabe said prayers around the living room. We set up the camera on the couch,” he said, while everyone else got more and more freaked out-looking the longer Frank talked. “Why are guys being so weird?”

Ray shook his head, white-faced. “Gabe didn’t even finish unpacking everything. You were _screaming_ ,” he said, and he welled up again before continuing, “I couldn’t wake you up, and I was terrified you hit your head - “

“But I remember walking through the house with you!” Frank insisted. “We talked about how weird it was, and you said that thing about June Cleaver! Because everything was, like, totally clean and preserved and all the furniture was - “

“What are you _talking_ about?” Ray all but shrieked, and seized both of Frank’s shoulders. “Frank, the house is gutted! There’s nothing here, it’s just dirt and dead rats and graffiti all over the walls.”

“We should just go,” Patrick said, nervously eyeing the doorframe. “Pete almost got nailed by that chunk of ceiling, Frank passed out and started hallucinating, and who knows what kind of toxic mold spores we might all have inhaled by now? This was a bad idea.”

Frank shrugged Ray’s hands off his shoulders and staggered to his feet. There was no way he could have hallucinated _all_ of that. His imagination wasn’t that good and he didn’t even know what 40s interior design looked like before today, how could he have conjured an entire house from nil? And Gerard. Gerard had to be real, he _had_ to be. He’d known Frank’s grandpa, he’d been to his baptism, for Christ’s sake. Frank shoved his hand into his jacket pocket - Gerard’s tags were gone. Frank’s heart leapt into his mouth. No, no no no, that was _real_ , he knew it was. He spun in a frantic circle, casting about the floor to see if maybe they’d fallen out of his jacket, and almost collapsed again in relief when he spotted them glinting under a chunk of door. “Look! Ray, look at this.” He scooped them up, held them in his cupped hands, and thrust his hands toward Ray in exasperation. “These are Gerard’s, he gave them to me. He’s the one who haunts this place, he knew my grandpa when he was a kid.”

Ray started to reach for the tags, his face still pinched with worry, when suddenly there was a huge, blinding flash of light that filled the entire kitchen and backyard and an earsplitting, apocalyptic boom. Frank almost dropped the tags in the uproar. Everyone panicked; Gabe, Pete, and Patrick took off running, and Ray grabbed Frank’s arm, shouting something that Frank didn’t hear because his ears were ringing. He just remembered to grab his backpack before Ray hauled him outside. They ran together through the bushes along the side of the house, and broke through them just in time for the sky to open up. Frank cursed, and dropped to his knees on the threadbare lawn to rip open his backpack and chuck his camera inside. He zipped it closed as fast as he could before scrambling back to his feet, and dashed over to the other four, standing in a huddle and staring up at Way Manor open-mouthed. “Shit,” Frank breathed when he realized what they were all looking at. 

The roof was on fire.

“Must have been lightning,” Gabe panted, shoving wet hair out of his eyes. “Jesus, we woulda been fucked if we’d stuck around.”

Pete dragged his hands down over his face. “Man, what are we gonna do for the project?” he moaned, and Patrick hauled off and whacked him with the flat of his hand.

“Do not say another _fucking_ word or I will kill you,” he said, low and furious, and shoved at Pete one more time before crossing his arms over his chest with a huff. “It’s not due till 11:59 tomorrow night.”

“I’m taking Frank home,” Ray announced, and before Frank could protest, Ray was shoving him toward his Civic. “Everyone get on Discord later and we’ll figure it out, alright? But we’re done here. Don’t argue with me,” he warned, when Frank opened his mouth to object. “Or I _am_ telling your mom you had a seizure out of nowhere, and unless you wanna be a human pincushion at University for the rest of the night, you will go quietly.”

Sullen, Frank shut his mouth, and let Ray bundle him into the passenger seat. His last glimpse of Way Manor he caught before Ray started the car and drove off was of the gossamer white curtains igniting along their edges behind the big window.

The storm got worse on their way to Frank’s house. Frank spent the ride inspecting Gerard’s dog tags with his phone flashlight, since it was too dark to see by just the weak daylight and Ray hated whenever Frank turned on lights in his car. The tags were in good shape; clean and polished, a little scuffed here and there, but Gerard had been in real combat and probably had them for awhile. They were stamped with his name - WAY, GERARD A - and then a series of numbers, and then underneath that it said DON WAY and the address of Way Manor. In the bottom right corner, a lone capital letter C. The back sides had been hastily engraved by hand, scratched with a knife or a key; one said “HOW WRONG WE WERE TO THINK,” and the other, “THAT IMMORTALITY MEANT NEVER DYING.” Frank ran his fingertips over the etchings, and tried to imagine Gerard hunkered down in an army tent somewhere, scratching the words into his dog tags between firefights, struck by grim inspiration. It made his heart ache.

By the time Ray turned onto his street, they were driving through sheets of water, and Frank had to book it from Ray’s car to his front door. He stayed under the awning until Ray’s car disappeared around the corner, and then he unlocked the door and dropped his backpack just inside. He pulled his flashlight out of it before grabbing one of the big umbrellas out of the holder in the foyer and heading back outside. Our Lady was a straight shot down the other side of the street and across Ridge; it took him maybe five minutes walking. He had to scale a fence to get into the locked cemetery and almost ate shit when his hands slipped on the top rail. Once inside, he tried to remember Gerard’s directions. Left of the chapel, oak tree. Problem was, the cemetery was _full_ of fuckin’ oak trees, and it got dark enough that Frank couldn’t read the headstones without a flashlight within ten minutes of searching. The rain kept coming down, and even with the umbrella, Frank was soaked and freezing. Finally, after what felt like half an hour, Frank stumbled across a series of headstones with World War II-era dates on them, and third to last from the end of the row, he found it at last.

MICHAEL JAMES WAY, PRIVATE, US ARMY, SEPTEMBER 10th 1924, JUNE 6th 1944. 

Frank broke out in fresh goosebumps reading it. Nineteen years old. He squatted down in front of the headstone, and one of his knees squished into the muddy grass; with a grimace, he set his free hand down to right himself, and felt something hard press against his palm. He shined the flashlight over the spot and discovered the rusty, round edge of a can poking up through the mud. Oh shit. Was this - Frank stuck the end of the flashlight between his teeth and reached down to pull at the can edge. With a little digging using a stick he picked up nearby, Frank managed to work it out of the mud, and wiped off the top of it before popping it open. Inside were two other dog tags, almost identical to Gerard’s; a yellowing, folded-up piece of paper that Frank didn’t open, and a blurry photograph. Frank made sure the umbrella was angled over the can and wiped his fingers against his jeans before he carefully reached in and pulled out the photograph. It was a very old picture of a beaming, tiny Gerard, posed with his little arms holding a baby wrapped in a draping white cloth, who Frank assumed was probably Mikey.

Frank bit his tongue, hard, as he blinked back tears. God. Gerard had loved his little brother so much. What an awful way to separate them. He tucked the photograph inside the can again and brushed the back of his hand over his eyes, before reaching into his pocket for Gerard’s tags. He spent a moment turning them over, taking them in, rubbing his thumb over the etchings on the back.

“I hope you find him,” he said aloud. He sniffled as his eyes welled up again. “Um. Good luck. Thanks for talking.” He set Gerard’s tags beside Mikey’s, and made sure the lid was fastened tight before returning it to the hole. He piled some extra dirt on top of it, although he wasn’t sure how much good that would do, and had a brief guilty back-and-forth with himself over whether not he should say a prayer. He decided on pulling out his grandpa’s rosary and praying it, quickly, his wet fingers slipping over the beads, and crossed himself before he got back to his feet. As he did, he was struck by a strange, giddy sensation like missing a stair; he stumbled off-balance, and then a voice in his ear like rustling leaves said, “Thanks, Frankie,” and Frank whipped around to find himself still alone.

A warm feeling sprang up in his chest. Frank smiled. “You’re welcome,” he whispered, and glanced down briefly at Mikey’s headstone to give it a farewell wave before heading home.

Upon opening his front door, Frank's mom called, “Frankie? That you?”

“You give someone else a key without telling me?” he replied, kicking his muddy, soaked Vans off and leaving them on the front porch. He turned around from hanging his jacket on the rack, and his mom had appeared in the kitchen doorway with a wooden spoon in her hand.

“Way Manor burned down. It’s all over the news,” she told him. She pointed to the small TV in the kitchen with her spoon. “Guess it got struck by lightning during the storm. The thing they keep talking about, though, is this skeleton they found in the basement. Isn’t that freaky? Your grandfather always swore there was something weird about that place.” She stopped, suddenly, and gave Frank a once-over. “Why are you covered in mud?”

Frank shrugged. “The school project we were shooting got kind of intense." He knelt beside his backpack and pulled out his Nikon, turning it on to check the footage he'd taken at the manor. Maybe they could use a few of the shots for whatever fix-it project they'd cobble together tomorrow. He squelched past him mom into the kitchen as he scrolled to the SD card, but when he tried selecting it, the camera beeped at him. SD CARD EMPTY. Frank stared at the display for a few moments, and then snorted, setting his camera down on the counter. "Grandpa was right. That place was _weird_.” 


End file.
